


Ink

by BeckKingOfHell



Category: Voltron - Fandom, vld - Fandom
Genre: M/M, Soulmate AU
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-01-06
Updated: 2019-01-06
Packaged: 2019-10-05 15:56:14
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,267
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17328041
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BeckKingOfHell/pseuds/BeckKingOfHell
Summary: This is a soulmate au.





	Ink

Everyone knew that soulmates were a thing. However they were rare and came in different ways. Some would experience dreams, others pain, names on their wrists, or even a timer counting down to their first meeting. 

However, Keith never heard of ink transferring.

“Daddy, I keep getting words on my hands and no matter how many times I wash them, they won’t come off.” Keith pouted up at his father, not understanding.

His father knelt down and asked to see his hands. “Well, Keith, it looks like you have a soul mate!” He smiled at his son. “If you write anywhere on your body, they’ll see it too. Think of it as a shared piece of paper.”

Keith looked down at his hands. “Will it come off if I write back?”

“Yes.” His father looked around for a pen or marker. “It’ll come off naturally when you wash, so the words will disappear after a few days.” He spotted one on the kitchen counter and handed it to Keith.

Keith just stared at the pen unsure if talking to a complete stranger was a good idea.

“Go on, try it.” His dad kindly urged.

Keith wrote on his palm ‘hi’.

They waited a few minutes for a reply but none came.

Keith looked up at his dad with tears in his eyes. “Did I do something wrong?” 

“No, no, sometimes it takes a while for them to reply. And sometimes, they could be in a different country, so they could be sleeping right now.”

Keith tilted his head. “So they could be in Africa with hippos?”

His father ruffled Keith’s hair, chuckling, “Yes, they could be in Africa with hippos.”

 

The next day Keith’s dad took him to the store to buy a book about soulmates. Granted Keith wasn’t the best reader for his age, (7) but boy, did he try. He would ask his father to read parts he didn’t understand, and to explain it to him.

It was during dinner when a royal blue ‘hola’ appeared on his palm.

“Dad, dad, they said something back! Give me a pen!” Keith’s father excited searched for the pen from yesterday.

Keith excited asked, ‘what is your name’.

They waited, but again, nothing happened. Keith threw the pen, “I hate my soulmate, they don’t like me!”

His father narrowed his eyes on the blue markings. “Keith, I think they don’t speak English.” 

He tilted his head. “English?”

“Yes, it’s what we’re speaking right now. It’s a language, like how old man Stormy from the candy store speaks German.”

“So they’re speaking German?”

“No, they’re speaking Spanish.”

“Where is that?”

“Go get your book, and I’ll show you.” He pushed aside his plate of chicken nuggets, cauliflower, and peanuts (he let Keith make dinner for the first and last time).

Keith ran back with the book, climbing onto his dad’s lap and flipping to the world map at the back.

“Alrighty, the most common places for Spanish speakers are here”- he circled his finger around South America- “and here”- he pointed to Mexico and dragged his finger to a few islands between America and South America- “and here.” He ended with his finger at Spain.

“That’s a lot of places.” Keith stated.

“Yes it is.” His father smiled. “Would you like to get some books on Spanish so you can learn it so you can speak to them?”

Keith’s eyes lit up. “Yes!”

And that was the end of the conversations. Once Keith got his hands on a ‘How to Speak Spanish’ book, it was mostly smooth sailing from there.

Mostly.

His soulmate didn’t reply for days on end sometimes, always saying ‘lo siento, emocionante’ repeatedly. 

He would ask ‘donde’ but never got a direct answer. This went on for months, so to distract himself, he learned more Spanish.

As time went on, Keith rarely wrote to his soulmate. He figured that when he’s old enough to go on dates, he’d talk to them more. 

He didn’t expect for them to talk to him the day his father died.

‘Hey, it’s been a while things okay?’

Keith stared at it. Even on the worse day of his life, on a day where it felt like everything was crashing down, there was still someone there.

He didn’t know what to say so he didn’t reply.

He never replied.

Not when they kept asking if he was okay. Not when they asked if they did something wrong. Not even when he got into the Garrison. He kept to himself, silently reading the messages and doodles on his arms.

 

_ Shiro’s not dead. _ Keith told himself over and over during his shower.  _ He’s not dead, he’s the best pilot from the Garrison, there has to be a misunderstanding, HE’S NOT DEAD. _

He shut off the water and dried off. His eye caught a familiar blue in the mirror and saw the words.

‘Do you hate me?’ written across his heart. 

Keith threw on clothes and grabbed a pen from his dresser. ‘How can I hate someone I’ve never met?’ he wrote on his arm.

Blue words appeared directly under. ‘Because I’m annoying?’

He sighed. ‘No you’re not. I don’t hate you. I just have a lot of things going on right now, and I don’t want to deal with anyone, talk to anyone, or even see anyone.’

‘Are you okay?’

Keith stared down at it, his heart heavy. He didn’t reply.

It wasn’t long before he was booted from the Garrison.

Days passed and the words ‘Do you hate me?’ were slowly fading. However Keith would never be rid of those words because his soulmate would just go over it again every time it got close to fading.

Months passed and he stop paying attention to the words on his chest. It was a normal sight for him, so it was easy to ignore.

He didn’t hate his soulmate. He just wanted some time to collect his feelings and thoughts.

 

A few months later he found himself in space, fighting an intergalactic war. He never told the team he had a soulmate, even though the words were still written on his chest.

After a particularly hard battle he noticed the words were gone. He touched the empty area, missing the blue letters.

He looked at his reflection in the mirror, seeing the new scars that dotted his body. There was a long, thin scar on his right side. Another one lined beneath his ribs. 

He may have had scars on his blank canvas, but he hated how empty his chest was.

Keith searched for a pen or, at least the Altean equivalent of one. After finding one in his drawers, he hesitantly hovered the pen over his chest. 

_ I haven’t spoken to them in a year, maybe more. What do I say after going silent for that long? _

He set the pen down, unsure of what to write back. 

_ ‘I don’t hate you’? ‘Right now I’m a huge mess and I’m scared of rejection’? ‘I’m in space and could meet my untimely doom any second and that stresses me out’? ‘I’m sorry’? _

He looked again at his empty chest, only to find that it wasn’t empty anymore. 

‘You hate me.’

Keith bit his lip, snatched the pen and scribbled over the blue words, and wrote ‘No.’ under it. 

‘Then why don’t you say anything anymore?’ Appeared on his left arm. 

_ This is your soulmate,  _ he reminded himself,  _ the universe picked them out for you, you can tell them anything. _

‘Because I’m not good with people.’ He wrote. 

‘That’s okay.’

‘Is it?’

‘Yes.’

Tears filled Keith’s eyes. He thought the only one who understood was Shiro. He shook his head and grabbed the towel by his shower. He got it wet and applied soap, wiping away the scribbles and the ‘No.’

Once he dried it he grabbed the pen and wrote over the blue, ‘I don’t hate you.’

He watched as the blue faded and new words were written under his. 

‘I love you too.’

Keith smiled. He was making progress. 

 

The team sat down together for a regular meal of space goo. Keith wasn’t paying the mindless conversations any attention until he heard Coran mention soulmates.

His head whipped up to look at the man.

“Oh, yes, we have them too! My best friend had a soulmate, a lovely girl that had fire in her eyes! They had dreams together to get to know each other.” He smiled.

“We have that type too.” Shiro said pointedly at Keith. “Keith has his through ink.”

All eyes were suddenly on him.

“You have a soulmate?” Pidge looked surprised.

“What, no!” Lance slammed his hands down on the table. “There’s no way  _ Keith _ has a soulmate, that’s impossible!”

Keith’s eyes flashed dangerously. “The only thing that’s impossible is  _ you _ having one. You’re such a flirt, I doubt the universe chose someone special for you.”

Lance growled. “Alright, prove it! Show us your messages.”

His anger suddenly vanished. “They’re erm, private.”

“Yeah right. You just don’t want to admit I’m right.”

“Alright, what’s your soulmate’s name?” He spat back.

Lance looked down, the fire gone. “I- I don’t know. They never told me.”

The look on Lance’s face made everyone go into an awkward silence. Keith quietly excused himself to go and train. 

 

After getting shoved to the ground for a few times, Keith decided to call it quits. He turned around to find Lance leaning against the wall, waiting for him.

“Uh-”

“-Before you say anything,” Lance cut him off, “I wanted to apologize. My soulmate and I are… having problems. I know the universe picked them out just for me, but.” He sighed. “I feel like it was a mistake, or I messed up or something, but they don’t like me.” Lance looked at Keith. “So I’m sorry. I’m sure your soulmate is real and that you two have a great relationship.”

Keith bit his lip. “I actually don’t know much about my soulmate. Just like you, I don’t know their name. And, I’m not that great at communicating with them.” He sat down and motioned for Lance to do the same. “I’m not great with people, and I know that Shiro’s tried to help me with my soulmate, but I’m fairly sure that I’m not doing a great job with it.”

Lance smirked. “What, do you ignore them or something?”

Keith stared guiltily at his feet. 

Lance’s smile quickly melted. “Keith?”

He threw his hands in the air. “I want to, I really do, but I don’t know what to say or how to talk to them! And to be fair, they kept me in the dark for the first few months, so I didn’t see anything wrong with ghosting on them when my father died.”

“Hey, man, it’s okay.” Lance reassured him. “If it makes you feel any better I didn’t really talk to my soulmate for a while because I couldn’t read English.”

Keith looked up. “You have a language barrier too?”

“Well, yeah.” Lance leaned back. “I got my soulmate in the middle of moving to America, I could speak English okay, but reading it was a whole new world!”

“My father bought me a Spanish to English book so I could talk to them. I remember them apologizing a lot and then suddenly being able to reply back in English.” He looked over at Lance who had his eyes narrowed. “You okay?”

“Do you hate me?”

The words struck Keith in the chest like a knife. He spent far too many months with that phrase written on his chest. “No.” He said firmly. 

Lance leaned closer. “Did your soulmate happen to tell you where they’re from?”

“Uh,” Keith racked his brain to remember, “I think it was Cuba? I don’t exactly know, I wasn’t good with conversations.”

He nodded. “Do you by chance have the words, ‘I love you too’, on your chest?”

Keith leaned back in shock. “How did you….?”

Lance’s eyes widen as he looked off to the side. “I erm, I need to go, Hunk said something about a new recipe and wanted my opinion, bye!” He bolted off without another word.

“Strange.” Keith said to himself. 

 

Before he went to sleep he noticed ‘What’s your name?’ written on his left arm. He grabbed his marker and wrote back ‘Keith’. 

‘Last name?’

‘Kogane. What’s yours?’

His soulmate didn’t respond immediately, which Keith was fine with. It did take them this long to know each other’s names, he could wait a bit longer. 

He looked down and saw ‘open your door’.

‘?’

‘Please’

“Well, okay then.” He stood up and walked over to his door, expecting emptiness and not Lance.

That’s one hell of coincidence. “Lance, what are you-”

“-Look at your arm. Please.” Lance’s face was a soft shade of red, his eyes pleading.

Keith looked down on his arm and saw ‘Lance McClain.’

Keith stared up at Lance, eyes wide, not believing what was going on.

“One hell of a way to find out, huh?” Lance joked, trying to lighten the atmosphere. 

“Yeah.” Keith rubbed the back of his neck. “Yeah, it is.” He had smile of relief on his face. His soulmate was right there, in front of him, looking at him with the most loving eyes.

“So,” Lance broke the silence, “can I come in?”

Keith nodded and stepped aside, welcoming his soulmate in. They had a lot of talking and explaining to do. But Keith already knew deep down, that Lance would understand everything. 

After all, Lance always had his back. Now and forever. 

**Author's Note:**

> I'll admit, I tried my best with this and I know it's not top tier writing. My son is currently having heart problems (he's okay, it's just stressful) and I know it affected the quality of this fic. I do plan on adding a part two however.  
> This is for the Paladin Secret Santa 2k18, and my giftee is Dani who's tumblr is irani-owl ^_^ I hope you like it!!!!


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